A retired general interrupted, "There is only one war. In Afghanistan, in Iraq. It's all one war."

"That's wrong!" Scheuer said.

"You're wrong, Michael," the general replied.

"I've lived it for 22 years," Scheuer said.

"I've lived it more than you have," said the general.

It was a dispiriting spectacle. Three and a half years after Sept. 11 our spies cannot even agree on such fundamental issues as what kind of a war the United States is engaged in, what kind of threats its enemies pose, and whether those enemies are now or have ever been connected.

. . . [T]he only common ground available was the bankruptcy of the 9/11 Commission and the new intelligence act. Circling the wagons, everyone in the room seemed to concur that they had succeeded in preventing another attack in spite of and not because of political efforts to redress intelligence problems in the intervening years.

Scheuer contended that 9/11 commissioners and politicians were driven by the families of the dead to pass a hasty piece of legislation that will not make Americans safer. "With all due respect to the widows," he said, "they don't know jack about running intelligence."

The other panelists hastened to agree.

Then there's Mark Steyn's latest, on why UN moral corruption is both inevitable and so pervasive the media barely notices it:

Now how about this? The Third Infantry Division are raping nine-year olds in Ramadi. Ready, set, go! That thundering sound outside your window isn't the new IKEA sale, but the great herd of BBC/CNN/Independent/Guardian/New York Times/Le Monde/Sydney Morning Herald/Irish Times/Cork Examiner reporters stampeding to the Sunni Triangle. Whoa, hold up, lads, it's only hypothetical.
But think about it: the merest glimpse of a freaky West Virginia tramp leading an Abu Ghraib inmate around with girlie knickers on his head was enough to prompt calls for Rumsfeld's resignation, and for Ted Kennedy to charge that Saddam's torture chambers were now open "under new management", and for Robert Fisk to be driven into the kind of orgasmic frenzy unseen since his column on how much he enjoyed being beaten up by an Afghan mob: "Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi," wrote Fisk. "No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash."

Who's straining at the leash here? Down, boy. But, if Lynndie's smashed to pieces our entire morality with just one tug, Bush's Zionist neocons getting it on with Congolese kindergarteners would have the Independent calling for US expulsion from the UN - no, wait, from Planet Earth: slice it off from Maine to Hawaii and use one of those new Euro-Airbuses to drag it out round the back of Uranus.

But systemic UN child sex in at least 50 per cent of their missions? The transnational morality set can barely stifle their yawns. If you're going to rape prepubescent girls, make sure you're wearing a blue helmet.